There are difficult times ahead, the leader of Cambridgeshire County Council (CCC) has said as the authority faces a £28million budget gap next year.

Cllr Lucy Nethsingha has said the county council may not be able to do all of the things that it would want to due to the financial pressures.

In February, the authority had predicted it would be facing a £17million budget gap for the 2023/24 financial year.

However, in a report presented to the Strategy and Resources Committee on October 20, it said this has now increased to over £28million, with a cumulative budget gap over the next five years of £108million.

Inflation, increased staffing costs, and uncertain demand for services were some of the issues the report said the authority is facing.

The report said it would be unsustainable to use council reserves to close the budget gap.

It added that central government had not given any indication of further funding to councils to meet pressures, and said therefore the authority is planning on the basis of needing to close the budget gap “almost entirely” through decisions within its control.

Tom Kelly, CCC’s service director for finance and procurement, said inflation alone had “doubled the funding gap”.

He added that the next budgeting round will be “extremely difficult” and that there would be “serious and significant financial challenges” to come.

Cllr Nethsingha said the “chaos” happening in central government had a “pretty catastrophic impact” on the budget.

She said: “Increased inflation and increased borrowing costs are going to mean that we have very very difficult choices to make.

“We’re not going to be able to do some of the things that we would have very much wanted to do, or we will have to do them more slowly or later and there is not much question about that.”

She said the summer had also added a “very considerable additional level of concern” around how the authority works to deal with the effects of climate change, in particular highlighting the impact of the drought on the roads in the Fenland area.

She added that there was a “hole” in the authority’s finances and that there will be a “whole lot of work” that while “desirable” to do, the council will “struggle” to do.

Cllr Steve Count, leader of the conservative opposition, highlighted the part of the report that said the authority may have to “take steps to reduce growing demand for services”, and may have to make “dis-investments or reductions to lower priority services”.

He said this meant there would be “cuts to services for vulnerable people”.

Cllr Count said decisions made by the joint administration had also widened the budget gap, highlighting the decision to pay staff the real living wage.

He added that he was not saying paying the real living wage was bad, but argued the report should provide details of how much ‘county council choices had widened the gap’, so that f cuts to services were made that the public could the “weigh up” the decisions made.

Cllr Elisa Meschini, deputy leader of CCC, said the “last thing that should be done in a cost-of-living crisis was to cut people’s wages.

She added that the current plans by the government not to conduct a spending review this year for how much funding councils should get would have a “massive impact.”

Cllr Meschini said without a review to take into account rising inflation, it could mean real time cuts of about 30 percent.

She said: “I am still actually thinking there must be a spending review in 2022, because if there is not then we are going to be in such big trouble.”